Belong to You(58)

I couldn’t turn to look at him for fear I would lose it. All of the memories came flashing back from the day that I walked into Michael’s office and found him leaning against his desk, his secretary on her knees, her head bobbing as she took him in. I struggled to free myself from Jack’s grip and ran as fast as I could to my car.#p#分页标题#e#



Jack stopped calling after the first day. I don’t know why I wouldn’t return his calls. I knew I was acting childish, but I wasn’t ready to speak to him. I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to his voicemails. Three days later, I was still dragging myself around feeling sick and sorry for myself. I had dark circles under my eyes and my face was swollen from crying. My hair was matted from the tossing and turning the night before and I didn’t have the desire to brush it. I forced myself to undress and turned on the hot water to steam up my tiny bathroom. The knock at the front door startled me, as I was about to step into the shower.

I threw on my robe and went to the door to find Jack on the other side.

“What do you want?” My voice was low and lackluster.

Jack stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “I don’t know what the fuck I did, but I’m going crazy Syd.” I looked up at him, seeing him for the first time in three days. He looked like I felt. The impeccably groomed man with the pale sparkling eyes was a disheveled mess. He had three days of scrub and his skin was sallow and eyes dim.

“I can’t do this Jack.” My voice was a whisper and the words began to break as I spoke. Jack took a step toward me and I put my hand up, keeping him at distance.

“What can’t you do Syd?” His tone was angry and he took another step closer.

I took another step back and spoke to his chest. “I can’t close my eyes and not see what is going on around me just because it makes life easier for me.”

Jack took another step closer and lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Look at me. What do you think is going on?”

I looked away and didn’t respond. I was fighting the tears back with all my might and I couldn’t look into his eyes.

He let go of my face and raked both his hands through his hair in frustration. Then he took a deep breath and grabbed my face with both hands, bringing himself down to my eye level. I had nowhere to look but into his eyes. “Nothing is going on and you know it. You’re scared. And so the fuck am I.” He paused and searched my eyes. “Baby, I’m not him. I’m not the asshole that made you afraid of giving yourself to me, but I wish like hell I could take away what he did to you. Because I’m in. I’m all in baby. I’m not perfect and I don’t know what the fuck I did to deserve someone as good as you, but you have me and I’m not settling for just a part of you. I want you. I want all of you baby.”

The tears flooded my eyes and poured down my face. Jack pulled me close to him and held me until there were no more tears left.

I pulled my face out of his chest. “There’s nothing going on between you and Jenna?” I looked up at him raw, vulnerability on the table bared to him.

“There’s only you baby.” Jack paused and reached down and lifted me up, cradling me into his arms. “I belong to you.”





Chapter 22




Weeks passed and my angst about Jack’s other life and the people he shared it with began to subside. We began to fall back into a routine and we even went out with Jack’s friend Tyler that I met in Hawaii and his new girlfriend a few times. We were beginning to settle in as a couple and, although it scared me, I was happier than I had ever been in my life.

Sunday morning we were reading the paper in bed when my cell phone rang and flashed a picture of Sienna. “Hey.” I didn’t even get to finish the word, Sienna was already talking over me. I had to ask her to slow down just to be able to make out the words that she was saying, her voice was screeching with excitement and she was going a mile a minute. I was only able to make out the last sentence. “The Smiths, Syd, can you believe it!”#p#分页标题#e#

I was confused and my conversation had gotten Jack’s attention too. He looked at me silently asking if everything was all right and I shrugged my shoulders in response. “What about the Smiths?”

Sienna took a deep breath to calm her on the phone. “They want us to open for them Syd! They want us, me and you, us, to open for them!”

“What, when?” I loved the Smiths. Years ago, when Sienna and I had a band back in Boston, we had made friends with a lot of other local bands, one of them was the Smiths. We had a mutual respect for each other’s music and we had always joked that some day we would alternate opening for each other’s bands when we went on tour. Years later, the Smiths made it big and Sienna and I were happy that, if it couldn’t have been us, we were glad it was them. Sienna and I had been to a dozen concerts over the last few years together and I knew they were about to release another album.